tanithryudo: (Read)
This morning we went to the 六朝博物馆, which has exhibits from Nanjing during its term as capital from the Three Kingdoms era through Jin and the North/South dynasties. Found out the local museum ticketing system uses meituan and requires passport info (but not necessarily the original documentation?).

Took some pictures and collected some stamps as souvenir.

Afterwards it was too late to visit other museums, so had a quick lunch. Also browsed a local clothing shop and bought a new pair of jeans. (My previous jeans have either been discarded as worn out or… no longer fit.)

This evening, ate out at a restaurant with my uncle/cousins whole family. Topics that came up included the state of the work force, and especially the hospital work force my cousin's wife belongs to. Mom attempted to pay the bill but lost the fight with my aunt.

Tomorrow will be onwards to Chengdu!
tanithryudo: (Gods at Play)
This morning featured my parents' continued struggles with their phone services and banking. None of it had anything to do with me, so I just lazed around in bed.

Also, we learned that Samsung S9 doesn't support eSIM. Unfortunately, this was after my dad made me buy another 3HK eSIM, which is now going to waste because neither he nor my mom can use it. -_-

For lunch, we went to my uncle's place. Had typical homemade food and made small talk. There were a lot of complaints about politics, and the state of education in Jiangsu province. My cousin's son is about to go from elementary to middle school, and they are aiming to get him into a private school.

For dinner, I met up with my cousin (and his son, who's already taller than me...) Made more small talk and took some pictures. Some interesting items we ordered: 黄鱼响铃(卷),河虾,鲍鱼,韭菜炒螺丝,桂花酒酿奶茶,春笋烧鮰魚...

That's about it for today.
tanithryudo: (Work)
The theme of the day is paperwork. And the pain of trying to get it done on a holiday.

So first thing in the morning, we went to the local police office. Apparently you gotta register arrival with them as a foreigner coming into China. I don't remember having to do this the last time I visited, but that was over ten years ago, so my experience is dated. Also, I guess if we had stayed at a hotel, they would do this process for the customer. Anyways, at the station, we were told most of the staff is off for the holidays, and we got referred to do the registration online over WeChat. At least that process went through smoothly.

Then we went to the local mobile services office (for China Mobile I think?) in order for my parents to sort out some issues with their phone(s). Mom got hers fixed (I think?). Dad still needs to buy some kind of roaming package for his CN number, or he can't use mobile payment.

Speaking of which, I did test out making a normal purchase with my WeChat and it worked, so that's good news.

After a brief lunch, we went home and rested my poor feet. In the afternoon, my parents went to the bank to sort out their account issues. Unfortunately, all banks were closed for holidays today.

I then went with my mom to the Nanjing south train station. On one hand, it's to verify the steps to get there, and also to get an estimate of the timing I'll need to schedule for on Sunday. On the other hand, I also tried to change for a better seat, but unfortunately there were no other non-B seats available on my train. My parents bought tickets for the 10th, and was able to get aisle seats for both of them. Meh.

Tomorrow, originally we planned to visit my grandparents graves in the spirit of Qing Ming. But my aunt is really superstitious and gave my mom a whole big spiral about how it's inauspicious (unhealthy?) do 扫墓 this year. So I guess we're not doing this this trip. My parents are going to try the bank again. I don't really have anything planned, so will just be resting my achy feet.
tanithryudo: (Zen)
Technically 2 days counting timezone changes, but we'll call it day 1.

Departure went smoothly. About an hour by BART to get to SFO. The self check in for UA didn't work for me on the 1st. So checked in at the US counter, and that also went smoothly. I am guessing it's because they also need to check the VISA, and there's no upload VISA option in the normal workflow for online check-in.

We got to the airport early, so waited about 3 hrs at the gate for boarding. The flight wasn't full, no one had the seats next to my window seat, so I got the whole row to myself. None of the onboard movies appealed, and I ended up watching a few episodes of Our Planet 3 nature documentary. Napped a bit here and there in between.

After reaching PVG, managed to meet up with my mom (who flew in from Vietnam) at the baggage claim exit area. The next problem is that they didn't buy the train tickets to Nanjing beforehand, claiming there's usually plenty available, but we hit the 清明 holiday rush, plus apparently some trains were canceled due to a Taiwan earthquake earlier in the day...Yeah, so no tickets available today or tomorrow, all sold out.

No bus service was available to Nanjing either. Buying another flight would cost 1k+ per person. So… ended up taking a web car. Cost should come out to 1.5k for the entire ride (about 3x cost by train for 3). And also dealing with rush our traffic (departed at about 5pm).

Ah well. Aren't I glad now I had the foresight of buying the train ticket to Chengdu ahead of time.

Edit: Car departed PVG at 5pm, it's now 11 and we're on the outskirts of Nanjing. Waiting in line for charging stations before getting off the freeway. Apparently this state of traffic is normal (for holiday periods?)…

The driver mentioned he has a colleague who took a similar customer. They took another route and are still stuck at 常州. I guess we were lucky to get a driver who was experienced enough to take the longer route on paper but end up being faster due to less overall traffic.
tanithryudo: (Read)
The day started on a high(er) note. We had lunch out with my grandfather, uncle/aunt, older cousin, and the aunt staying with us. It was at a hotel my grandmother had a coupon for. The food wasn't all that great, as is normal for hotel restaurants, but it wasn't horrible. Just small portions I guess.

After food, my uncle/aunt left to deliver the portions we'd set aside for my grandmother (she isn't mobile enough to leave the house far). My mom and aunt went to a nearby bookstore to use up another coupon that they had for that place.

Outside the bookstore, there were some small seller stalls. One of them was for hats, and they had some really adorable animal ear hats. I picked up a grey fuzzy wolf ears hat. My mom and aunt also picked out a hats they liked, and we also got one for grandmother and one for my baby nephew.

In the bookstore, we picked up a novel that my uncle mentioned wanting at lunch. Then my mom and I went to the fourth floor to look at kiddie books for my nephew (he's very lucky with being the focus of the entire families on both parents' side). We mainly looked up educational and acitivity oriented children's books. I was reminded of the Where's Waldo and I Spy series books that I remember from grade school that might apply for him as well - if not now then in coming years. Unfortunately they don't carry any translations or equivalents of these books in Chinese bookstores, so I settled for writing down the names and passing it onto my uncle, to see if they can find/order anything online.

This evening, however, everyone gathered together for a 'family meeting'. My aunt has something of a person crisis going on in her life, and the meeting was to inform everyone and come up with ideas on what she should do. I won't go into much further on a public entry, but suffice it to say that it really is pretty depressing and I feel for her and for my absent younger cousin who was hit pretty hard by it as well.
tanithryudo: (IDIC)
Beaucracy has been catching up with anarchy growth these years, it appears. Now, you need ID to buy train tickets too.

So we trundled out this morning with our passports to buy early the train tickets for next Monday. The first ticket place we hit - empty counter and the store it shares space with tells us that sometimes the ticket person just won't bother to show up if there isn't likely to be much business. The second place we hit - empty counter with just a sign on the window saying there's computer issues and they're not open. So we took the metro to the station itself - where the counter person tells us they only take bookings up to four days in advance; any earlier and you need to book via internet or phone.

W. T. F.

The hell is this service?! -_-

So tired and fed up, we went back home for lunch (and a nap for my mom). Called the number on the cyclotron at the train station, and managed to book our tickets with the electronic answering machine. In the end it told us to make payment and pickup at any train ticket outlet (which brings us back to square one -_-).

My aunt made a call to my cousin (the younger one), and we asked her to do an online search for other ticket outlets in the region. Eventually, we came up with another location, called ahead to make sure there's someone there, and finally succeeded in picking up the tickets this afternoon.

I don't know if we were just extra-ordinarily unlucky this morning, or if that kind of shoddy service is common for public services, where counter people can just not bother to show up whenever. It certainly leaves much to be desired.

Also, the extra hassle of having to have ID for placing the ticket order and picking up the tickets is certainly new. The explanation for these new measures is that they are for anti-conterfiet and anti-scamming reasons. I can somewhat see the reason for it, and it probably isn't too much of a hassle to many locals. But to visitors like us who are paranoid about ID and who don't have easy access to the internet, it's a nightmare.

(I keep saying they should get internet installed at this place regardless if my grandparents use it or not - how much could they charge per month if not based on usage? - but no one listens to me. Feh.)
tanithryudo: (Messenger)
Went to the newly refurbished Nanjing museum today, along with my aunt and my (older) cousin who was off today. My mom stayed home since she wasn't interested in historical stuff, and also someone needs to stick around with the grandparents.

Although the museum does say they need ID to get a ticket, it didn't seem like they were all that strict about things. That is, I don't recall anyone checking the tickets we got through the day.

There were 7 major areas of the museum, many containing multiple galleries within themselves. We went first to the Ancient History building, which holds artifacts spanning neolithic to Qing. Unfortunately, my camera batteries died out around the Tang section. On the bright side, I seem to remember that most of the stuff from this building seems to have been much the same as the time I visited the museum in 2011 (though my memory might be wrong).

After we finished that first building, it was already 12:30ish. So we took a break for lunch. It was raining lightly, so we didn't go far, just to a...something about Blue Gulf Cafe? Anyway, it was a fairly simple lunch, and I also picked up new batteries (which was also dying out later in the day before we even finished viewing all the exhibits, so pfft, Chinese quality).

In the afternoon, we hit the Fine Arts area next. The galleries in this area seems to be actual historical pieces interspersed with galleries of contemporary artists. (In retrospect, I should've really saved my camera on the the contemporary galleries. Meh.) For the historical galleries, there was an Ancient Arts, Ancient Calligraphy, Ancient Sculpture, etc.

After the arts area, we went looking for a restroom and found ourselves in the Special Exhibitions building. Supposedly its galleries holds many current/temporary shows, many which are joint projects with other museums/places. There was a floor dedicated to gold workings throughout Chinese history. Another floor was mostly Qing court artifacts. All of them were very pretty of course.

A lot of the other areas/galleries we only took a brief glance through as the day drew to a close. There was a Digital Gallery, which was a lot of digital educational stuff - movies, moving wall murals, etc. - great for kids, I suppose. There was also a Nationalist Era gallery, which was basically a small scale demo of a small block or two in early 20th century style. They also had a few actual concession shop business being sold there, though, which was a bit jarring if you looked too close. Another was something called the Intagibles Gallery - which consisted of live demos of cultural crafts/arts (as well as a brisk business of selling said products) and some videos/pictures/etc. of other cultural stuff (dance, medicine, food, etc.) Not really something all that museum worthy IMO. They're reaching a bit there.


It was pretty dark by the time we go back home, although at least it had already stopped raining by the time we'd left the museum. My mom had bought local river crabs for dinner, and they were delicious. We are apparently in precisely the right season for crabs, as both the male and female ones were positively stuffed. Still a bit of a pain to eat though. :p
tanithryudo: (Zen)
Nothing much happened yesterday. Today is the big reunion day and 90th bday party for my grandmother. This morning, my uncle, his wife, and my older cousin arrived first. Then later, my aunt and her husband arrive with their daughter and son-in-law.

We all chatted for a while and exchanged gifts and whatnot, then all trundled off to the SEU restaurant that we had reserved (and ordered ahead of time yesterday).

Lunch was ok. We had turtle soup, which was cool and yummy. The rest was more standard fare. Grandma gave a speech, as did my uncle. It's all on video.

Afterwards, we took a short walk around the university before heading home and everyone basically chatted away the afternoon, catching up on...stuff. I guess.

In the afternoon, us cousins three took a short walk to the SEU campus again, where my older cousin met up with his wife, son (whom we met three days ago), and mother-in-law.

This evening my younger cousin, her husband, and their dad are going to head back to Wuxi. My aunt however will be staying behind for the rest of our stay in Nanjing.
tanithryudo: (Work)
Went out with my mom to meet two of her old friends (my aunts I guess). We had lunch at a seafood buffet. By seafood, here it's less crabs and lobster, and more every kind of fish you can think of. Of course it's all in Chinese so I didn't bother to remember what fish was what. There was also sushi and sashimi, which I haven't had for a long time now. Yum.

During the lunch, they mentioned that the Nanjing museum had finished renovations and has now opened as the second largest museum in China (behind Beijing). I recall that I had visited there the last time I was here, and it was right before the place closed for the major renovations. That was about 2 years ago. Also, apparently there's so many people aiming to visit, that they cap the # of visitors to the place, which kinda sucks. But, I was also told that foreign passport holders can get a guaranteed spot in admission compared to local visitors.

We also did some shopping. There was a clothing store right outside the building where the restaurant was, and they had some nice cheap clothing. I got a leather coat for 288 RMB, and a pretty shirt for 40. On the way home, we stopped by the shopping court underneath the local supermarket (where I had seen some nice fuzzy fabric type pants) and got 3 pairs of pants and 2 shirts for a total of 296 RMB. I think I've gotten all I need of clothing on this trip.

I had also checked in at a few telecomm stores to try and buy a SIM card for my old phone. Unfortunately, it seems most of them want proof of identity, typically the national ID card. We had also passed by a web cafe, which also wanted the same. So pretty much I would have to bring my passport out with me to see if that would work. Bleh.
tanithryudo: (Gods at Play)
This morning my uncle brought over his grandson, my... nephew? once removed? What is the English term for the son of my cousin? Any way, the little tyke is almost two years old and cute as buttons. He's got a cute squeaky voice, and he looks a lot like his father.

My uncle & aunt, it turns out, has been doing pretty much all of the raising of the kid, who more or less lives with them rather than his parents. His parents are all pretty busy with work and stuff - my cousin apparently has like a work commute that's over an hour long (one way). My uncle & aunt though are both retired so they have plenty of time to take care of the kid. So yeah. That's a thing here.

The kid apparently likes to play with plastic bottles (empty of course) and to tear things up. He's not 100% potty trained yet, but does have a decent vocabulary.


In the afternoon, I took a short walk around the block (into Southeastern University and back) with my grandfather. Took my phone along and tried to detect any open networks. Alas, there was nothing that was open, connectable, and didn't require a guest login. Bleh.
tanithryudo: (Messenger)
Woke up around 4-5 AM and couldn't fall asleep again. I guess I'm still jetlagged.

We checked out of the hotel around 6, and took the metro to the airport. Actually had a second breakfast there, which was surprisingly yummy for airport food.

For that matter, the lunch we were served on the flight was surprisingly yummy as well. Good rice and tender fish. Leaps and bounds better than the stuff from the US trans-Pacific flights. I guess it's cuz this flight was a HK flight, and they really deserve the reputation for great food.

After arriving at Nanjing, we took the aiport bus first. Unfortunately, our stop did not have good access to taxis, so we ended up lugging the luggage up several flights of stairs and then further took the metro. And then, at our metro stop, we still had to walk like 2-4 blocks to get to my grandparents' place. Bleh. I still think it would've been worth avoiding all this hassel with the expense of just going for a taxi from the airport to begin with.

The rest of the afternoon and evening was as expected. A lot of small talk, greetings, phone calls (greetings and spreading the news). I am surprisingly sleepy so early in the evening though, unlike in HK. So going to hit the hay...

I'm back!!

Oct. 6th, 2011 10:41 pm
tanithryudo: (Wretched)
*is ded*

10 hour flight, stupid different baggage rules for US flights, then 1 hour BART...I managed to lose track of the bag of duty free food gift items stuff we bought at the Nanjing and Taipei airports, so Mom's not happy with me. T_T

Ugh. Only bright spot is I didn't get sick this time, the first time ever for a trip to China. Gonna crash.
tanithryudo: (Stupidity)
Nothing happened yesterday. Today we head back to the U.S. Unfortunately, there is a 9 hour layover in Taiwan. So I'm wasting some time at the transfer station.

On the ride over from Nanjing on the Airbus, I got a chance to watch "Green Lantern." Yeah, it was about as underwhelming as expected. For a character that is basically billed as a "space-cop", there is precious little scenes that are space related or heavy sci-fi. Pretty much all of the scenes of Oa were covered in the trailers, and "Iron Man” had more high-tech than this movie.

My complaints of DC's incompetence at characterization still stands. I'd hate to think that the average movie-verse DCU earthling is so bad that the likes of movie-Hal would be the best choice for courage for the GL ring. Then again, none of the other DC movies have exactly turned out any paragons of virtue either. Give me Marvel, at least when it comes to the movies, I guess.
tanithryudo: (Food)
Went with my dad to the Nanjing Museum this morning - the province level museum, actually, despite the name. It's supposed to have the better stuff. Unfortunately, most of the place had been blocked off for renovations/construction, and of the sole building that was still open only maybe half the exhibits were open. It's also slated to be fully closed on the 8th, and wont open again until sometime In 2014, presumably completely rebuilt and expanded.

Of the still available exhibitions, we saw the full jade exhibit - which was cool the ceramic exhibit which only encompassed the Ming to Qing dynasties, a special exhibition on the Duke of Jiangdu (江都王), and another misc special treasures exhibition.

Despite the small selection of halls, there was still a decent amount of stuff to look at, and thus also photos of them. I'm especially proud of my jade exhibit pics, since the ones I took last year at the Shanghai Museum were kinda bad due to not being familiar with the camera, and the ones from the Xi'an Museum were few due to running out of time.

Afterward, we went to the shopping center I saw the Pizza Hut shop last time so I can experience the Chinese pizza experience. We did not predict the huge line outside the place, and the expected hour wait for service. According to the waitress managing the queue, there were 2 other Pizza Hut stores nearby. The next one we found "only" had a half hour line, so we ended up eating there. Also, price-wise, this place is possibly more expensive than pizza places in the U.S., and maybe even slightly more than the gourmet Italian places in the States, even. Very odd, especially considering the much lower prices at the nearby KFC or McDonald's; not to mention the lack of lines. I took photos of the menu. Hee.
tanithryudo: (Dimension Guide)
The last day of the Taiwan tour took us through some canyon and cave-y places. Kinda cool; took some pictures. Period started, which was not so cool.

Stayed at the same hotel as the first day in Taipei. Got a wake up call at an ungodly early 5 AM the next day.

Then it's to the airport and a flight by Airbus to Nanjing. Pretty much the same amenities on the flight. Each seat got it's TV screen, with a decent selection of movies (I think there was the same selection as Air China). Unfortunately, the flight wasn't really long enough to actually watch a full movie (counting all the pauses due to announcements). Also noted you can play games on it too. Also, there was an usb port on the thing.

After arriving at Nanjing's airport, we took the airport bus into the city and then a taxi to my grandparents' place. And then it's nod and smile while I get interrogated on the minutae of my personal life. *cry*

Overall impression of Taiwan:

- Five star service all around, both within the service industries (cab drivers, various uniformed people, even janitors)... Very obvious contrast once we got to China and nobody gives you the time of day.

- Very close relationship, culturally speaking, to Japan. There doesn't seem to be any resentment as from other Asian countries that had been occupied in WWII. I guess the Japanese occupation in Taiwan hadn't been that bad for the locals.

- Much sparser population. Nowhere near like any of the major Chinese cities. Reminds me more of Chinatown in the States.

- Much cleaner place. Both in the air, in and outside of the buildings, on the sidewalks, etc. Probably can chalk that up to the slower rate of progress over a longer period of time rather than the short burst of modernization on the mainland.

- Food is...weird. And I say this as a Chinese. :P Definitely distinct from most Chinese food varieties I'm familiar with. Large amounts of various forms of seafood. Also seems to be a encompassing love of stinky tofu, which is NOT one of my likes.

- Very very green. Even in the cities, the plants are everywhere, lush and green. Most of that could be put down to being in the sub/tropics, where conditions are great for plants. Also, most of the eastern regions of Taiwan are still sparsely developed, so there's pretty well preserved areas of wilderness that are marred by little than the occassional rest station.
tanithryudo: (Candlelight)
My grandfather's birthday is on the 27th, which is after we leave, so we decided to celebrate today. As one of my cousins couldn't make it, and thus also no need to invite his girlfriend and my other cousin's boyfriend, we decided to just hold the reunion at my grandparents' place instead of eating out.

I won't go into the food except to say we all got stuffed silly. Afterwards there was cake of which pictures were taken.

After that, we all sat down and talked about miscellaneous stuff while waiting for the dinner to digest. After exhausting topics like work and economics, the discussion eventually turned to (recent) politics.

Apparently to them, it's more about the problems with Tibet than about the protests of the Olympics, though I suppose the latter is related to/caused by the former. I learned a new term: "藏毒". Long discussion short (we have parts of it recorded on video anyway), they were very vocal that the whole issue with the Dali Lama, Tibet, etc. was caused by western countries secretly backing them, and primarily motivated more by maintaining power over China than the ideology they claim.


...In a slight tangent, I really need to find out how to convert/edit the videos downloaded from the camera from the camera-specific MOV format to (reasonably sized) commonly readable video formats... Hrm.
tanithryudo: (Weary)
Today we began the traditional preparations for our eventual return to the US - that is, buying presents for all the thousand and one people back home. Not to mention picking up all the stuff that friends/distant relatives are asking us to carry to the US for them.

For gifts, the obvious choice would be the Olympic mascots since this year is Olympics year. The official stuff comes from the post office, so I went there with my aunt early this morning to take a look at the prices. They range from about 22 RMB for a key/cellphone chain to 58 RMB for a fan. My aunt said there were pairs of Olympics chopsticks that were very pretty and for 20-something RMB, but those apparently were too popular and were already sold out.

Then, we went out shopping for real, with pretty much the entire household of women sans my grandma - there was me, my younger cousin, my mom, and my aunts (of my two cousins). Estrogen... level... skyrocketing...

Our first stop was Fuzi Miao (夫子庙), which is pretty much the grand the flea market of Nanjing, where you will find a lot of stuff for cheap (and/or fake :P).

Our first stop was a walk-by kidnapping from a teahouse. They had a bunch of girls outside advertising various teas. My mom needed to buy some kind of tea that my dad had told her to get him, so while she was busy finding those, the rest of us tried the various teas they pushed on us. I located the section for chrysanthemum tea - same as that I had when I was still rooming with cashew, so I bought a bag for 24 RMB. As I was leaving the place, they also forced on me a bag of jasmine tea for 10 RMB... and I am just an easy mark I guess. =_=

Then we examined several souvenier shops for (non-official) Olympics stuff, and did end up buying a bunch of keychain stuff to hand out in bulk to more generic contacts (like more distant co-workers). Mom bought four ceramic turtles for her male colleagues, against the rest of our advice that those guys better not know what "乌龟王八" means. ^^;

After picking up a few more pieces of souveniers, we drove over to a mall building for clothing. In general, the prices are much lower than those in Shanghai, but there also seems to be more coats and jackets than there were normal shirts and inner clothing for sale (which was I was more interested in). But anyway, with so many females present, I think we spent more time having people trying stuff on and then arguing about how stuff looks on who than actually buying stuff. *cough* I did end up with one pair of pants, one semi-coat, and one shirt.

It was near dinner time when we managed to make it home. My feet hurt like hell, but at least I got most of my presents done. Now I just need to buy some of the official Olympics stuff from the post office tomorrow for the closer colleagues I have at work (like the managers *cough*).
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